The Arles Contemporary Book Award for 2009 goes to
JH Engström and Anders Petersen's collaborative book From Back Home, edited and designed by Greger Ulf Nilson and published by Max Ström.
The Rencontres d'Arles Book Award is one of the most prestigious awards
in contemporary photography.

As reported by the British Journal of Photography, Klavdij Sluban, a French photographer, has been selected for the 2009 European Publisher's Award for Photography. The announcement was made earlier today at the Rencontres d'Arles.

The European Publishers Award for Photography is a major initiative to encourage the publication of contemporary photography.
Open to photographers world-wide, the competition is a unique collaboration between six European Publishers – Actes Sud (France), Apeiron (Greece), Dewi Lewis Publishing (Great Britain), Edition Braus (Germany), Lunwerg Editores (Spain) and Peliti Associati (Italy).

The Award guarantees that his project 'East to East' will now be published in book form.

Using technology recently developed for electronic textiles, researchers at MIT have developed a fabric camera made from polymer fibers. The potential applications are difficult to predict -- the advance of these type of high-tech fiber technologies will radically transform the integration of new technologies into our everyday lives, making processes like monitoring vital signs, air quality and even collecting visual information an invisible function of the clothes we wear.

integrate eight semiconducting light sensors into a polymer cylinder with a diameter of 25 millimeters. controlling the sensor's spacing and angle within the fiber. Once the sensors, made of a type of semiconducting glass, were in position, the polymer cylinder was heated and then stretched so that the diameter shrank the diameter of hundreds of micrometers--a process that is identical to the way in which commercial fiber is made for telecommunication applications--retaining the orientation of the sensors.

Shown from top, clockwise: Deformer, Elisabeth- I want to eat, and Open See.

In May 2009, FotoGrafia- Fotofestival Internazionale di Roma celebrated its fifth year under the direction of photographer and publisher Marco Delogu of Punctum Books. The festival hosted a mix of lectures and exhibitions by photographers such as Nan Goldin, Rinko Kawauchi and Don McCullin. Other special events included a slide exhibition featuring the work of Gus Powell and Juliana Beasley, and the Premio FotoGrafia Libro Award for the best Italian and International photobooks.

The jury for this year's Premio FotoGrafia Libro Award was comprised of myself; Benedetta Cestelli Guidi of S.T. Foto Libreria Galleria; curator Marta Dahó; Erik Kessels of KesselsKramer; and Michele Smargiassi of la Repubblica. We judged over 180 books in the second Italian and first International book award of Fotofestival di Roma. Each judge selected 5 to 10 books from the books on display and all the votes were tallied. The Damiani book Deformer by Ed Templeton was unanimously selected for the Italian Book Award. Steidl's book Open See by Jim Goldberg was selected in the first round of voting for the International Gold Metal Award. Then the jury had to revisit all books with 2 or 3 votes.

After some espresso, pastries and a vigorious hand-washing, the jury was ready to tackle the final list of six books for the second place winner: Episode Books' Baghdad Calling, Postcart's Non si avrà ragione di me: Poeti del Novecento per Dino Campana, Contrasto's Oltrenero, Hysteric Glamour's Hokkaido, plus the self-published books 101 Billionaires by Rob Hornstra and Elisabeth- I want to eat by Mariken Wessels. Each judge was allowed as much time as needed to decide on the Silver Award winner for the International Prize. After a brief time of deliberation the jury came to a consensus on young Dutch photographer Mariken Wessel's book Elisabeth.

Benedetta Cestelli Guidi questioned whether the books were too similar in content to be on the final list. After some thought on the topic all of the judges agreed that "all the books selected by the jury are finished works in their own right, greater than an exhibition of their parts. The narrative characteristics normally associated with the nature of a journal are present in all the final selections."

The judging of the book prize was a wonderful and rewarding experience. Italian printing, and particularly photobook printing, has a reputation for being the best in the world while Rome is a mecca for many photographers to shoot and study at higher schools of learning such as the American Academy, British School, Academie de France or Czech Cultural Institute, all located in the city. The festival's motivation is to establish Italian photography's place in the world by showcasing Italian-made works and bringing international photographers to Roman audiences. It was a world-class festival and I was honored to be involved in their first International Book Prize.

Former Santa Fe resident and PDN Photo Editor Amber Terranova gives her wrap up of Review Santa Fe and and interview with one of Center's 100 Jason Florio.

I've just returned from sunny Santa Fe after an exciting weekend of reviewing portfolios and meeting with photographers from all over the world.Photo-Eye kicked off the event on Thursday night by setting up a delicious New Mexican buffet dinner for all of the photographers, reviewers and people in the Santa Fe community. The outdoor area was packed with photographers and reviewers mingling, while others perused the bookstore and Debbie Fleming Caffery's striking new exhibition(that opened the same night in the gallery).

While in the bookstore I asked some folks to share with us their favorite book of the moment. Here's what some said:

Our bookstore staffer Ben Lerman pointed me to this new picture rating system just announced by Penn State University.

"An online photo-rating system developed at Penn State is the first publicly available tool for automatically determining the aesthetic value of an image, according to a Penn State researcher involved with the project."

Now you can upload an image and have a computer instantly "read it" and then "rate it" based on its or more accurately, the programmed picture aesthetic.

We tried the service by uploading an FSA Walker Evans portrait and a Diane Arbus iconic image. Evans passed with flying colors (73.1/100), but the Diane Arbus portrait of the twins (the classic cover image of her Aperture monograph) didn't fare so well (22/100).

People love previewing books online. While it's definitely not the same experience as browsing books in a bookstore, this digital equivalent does help give people a sense of a book. This is why we developed our BookTease at photo-eye early on, long before Amazon did something similar. While our BookTease gives a good picture of the layout of a book, it's not meant to capture the complete content, nor does it put the text into a searchable database.

My friend Laurie Tümer turned me on to a recent NPR blog post about the patent granted to Google for their new scanning book technology. The Google Book Search project's extraordinary goal is to digitize nearly every book ever published, allowing a person to search for content easily and thoroughly. Think of it as the Google Search engine for books. Apart from the significant copyright issues, there are other serious, technological problems to overcome. Google needed to develop an incredibly efficient system to scan each page of millions of volumes.

Scanning book technology has been around for a number of years with Atiz being one of the pioneers. Atiz uses a V-shaped apparatus to prevent damage to the books. Other companies apparently destroy the books by cutting each page out sheet by sheet.

Google's technology uses an infrared camera to detect the three-dimensional shape of an opened book. Their proprietary software corrects for the distortion of the type, giving an accurate picture of the information on each page.

But perhaps there's an even better way of doing this. Take a look at this interesting comment by Daniel Mitchell on the NPR blog.

"Do you need to open the book at all? Scan it like a MRI - read the book from the outside with a broad spectrum of different wavelengths and focal points. Create a full 3-D image of the "book" - paper, ink and all. Once finished scanning - hand the data over to a computer algorithm to process the information to recreate the text, pages, textures and all the subtleness of the books content. No damage to the book - no need to turn pages."

Makes sense, though MRI technology may not yet be able to resolve the variability of paper and ink. But that would be a fantastic use of technology!

One of the new technologies that I've been following quite closely is the evolution of the digital book. Yes, e-Books are here to stay, for better or for worse; I actually know people reading books on Amazon's Kindle. Really!

Myself? I have tried various iPhone e-Book applications, but haven't yet started using them. The screen is frustratingly small, and with the type at a comfortable size, after reading a short paragraph it's time to go to the next page. That's not conducive to pleasurable reading. Kindle and the Sony e-readers both seem klutzy and not a real book experience. Ultimately, reading a book on a computer still seems foreign to me. I like the tactile nature of a traditional book and I like the contrast of not always being on a notebook computer. I also miss the art of the book and its great variety of typography and design.

However, there are some interesting new hardware developments that may change some of these complaints shortly.
First, there is Apple's forthcoming device, which is still under wraps but due to be released as early as this summer. Dubbed the "media tablet," it will no doubt be a stunningly beautiful piece of hardware. It looks to be a kind of grown-up iPod Touch or iPhone that will include a gorgeous high-resolution, touchscreen display, wireless and app store capability, e-reader, and it will, of course, be sexy.

Here's what this device might look like.

But the e-Book I keep hoping for is not the flat-surface tablet that's been around for years. Instead it's a folding screen device where you could see two pages at once and hold it just like a book.

A project exploring this notion can be seen below. Though these prototypes are all a bit too awkward, they do show great potential.

Now for the elegant device that seems to have the most potential announced last year by the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative. OLPC is the brainchild of Nicholas Negroponte, founder and Chairman Emeritus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab. OLPC's breathtaking goal is to provide computers at such a low price that they could be put into the hands of almost every child in the world. That would provide a truly profound revolution in global education.

OLPC's beautiful prototype seems to be the almost perfect book substitute. The version 2 of this device can be seen below.

Unfortunately, there is great skepticism as to whether Negroponte can be successful with his mission and whether or not his company can survive long enough to release this product. Even if they don't, Negroponte has opened the eyes of many people as to the potential of his proposed device and his ambitious program. Perhaps others (hint Apple) might run with the idea, albeit at a higher price.